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this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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This is what we get when people buy things they barely understand, and refuse to learn about. Bluntly, I don't understand how someone can buy, own, and use something that they continually rely on with nearly zero knowledge of how it works, how it fails and what pitfalls you may experience in extreme operating conditions. Additionally, how to recognize when things are going sideways and what to do about it.
It reminds me of the last time I had a car overheat on me. It was just as cold as this (around -25C or -30C), and I was driving to work. The vehicle was a beater, so it was in some state of disrepair. As you can imagine, it was an ICE vehicle. It started just fine, or at least as fine as I can expect from the conditions, and I hit the highway. I was headed to work and didn't have enough time to just let it warm up before heading out. I'm driving down the highway, waiting for the heater to start working. It didn't. The temperature gauge on the dash stayed pinned to "cold", and no heat from the heater core.... After a few minutes on the highway, I knew something was very very wrong. I pulled off the highway and to the first gas station I saw. I turned off the car as quickly as I could. I checked and there was no coolant in the engine I went in to the station and picked up some premixed coolant, refilled the vehicle with coolant, and the first few short pours vaporized as soon as they went in. Once it stopped vaporizing coolant, I filled it up. I made it to work, a little late, but with a working car.
You don't need to know every fucking detail about how the vehicle does what it does, just the broad strokes about the basic systems that keep the vehicle working and how they fail and how they're maintained. If you don't, well..... Just look at the OP.
Speaking of knowing the pitfalls, how did you manage to run out of coolant my friend? That's day one of owning a beater.
The coolant situation was fine until the deep freeze. My theory is that the coolant that was in it was not capable of being liquid at -20C, and when the vehicle was started, the heat couldn't move because the coolant in the rad was frozen. Causing it to exceed the maximum temperature and vaporize. As the hot vapor penetrated the system, the rad slowly melted, causing the now liquid coolant to flow into the engine. But the engine was so hot that the coolant vaporized on contact.
This process continued until all the coolant was vapor and that vapor exceeded the pressure limits of the system and that caused it all to escape the system through the pressure cap on the rad.
I believe that the continual vaporization of the coolant was the only thing that kept the engine from overheating to the point of a complete failure.
I swear, it had coolant in it before the deep freeze.
Yeah, that happens. That's why they make block heaters. The moral of the story is don't be a dick about people not knowing everything about their vehicle. I still argue with some of the smartest people I know about filling their tank before severe weather hits. We're not all on the same level, most people just expect it to work.
Oh, I'm not trying to be a dick about anything. I'm just saying I don't understand the mindset of being okay knowing next to nothing about the things they own and rely on every day.
That's it.
Sorry if that was not clear.